Speaking Greek means digging into inflections

[Paul-Nitz]

Speaking Greek means digging into inflections.

Kalos free software can help.

• What is 3rd person Aorist Imperative of δεικνυμι?
  Kalos can find it in a minute.
  
  Enter δεικνυμι. Generate a full inflection, and voila!
  δειξάτωσαν
  
  PROS
  It will inflect any word, verb, noun, adjective, pronoun.
  The inflection can be exported into a number of formats, including Excel.
  CON
  I can't find a way to type Greek directly into the input boxes. I have to type a Greek word somewhere else and then paste it into the box.

http://www.kalos-software.com/index.php

Another resource I have bought, but not yet received is Randall Buth's "A Greek Morphology" book.
http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/b ... ine-greek/

[cwconrad]

I honestly don't think one can learn the inflections this way; I think that they must be learned through exercises that imitate actual usages in practice -- through conversation, through expansive reading in texts of various levels of complexity. You really can't start from scratch to talk to somebody with a lexicon in one hand (or on one's computer or smartphone) and a copy of All the Greek verbs or a parsing tool such as Kalos. I think rather that one learns by practicing conversation with simple sentences that use the standard inflections for omega verbs and their contracted variants in alpha, omicron, and epstilon-stems and the inflections for the μι verbs in most common use. That's the procedure that's actually followed in the courses offered by Randall Buth, Daniel Streett, et al. The old Latin pedagogical saw is discimus agere agendo -- "We learn to do by doing." The equivalent here would be διαλεγόμενοι μανθάνομεν διαλέγεσθαι.

[Paul-Nitz]

I appreciate CWC's comment. Inflection generating software doesn't seem a natural start for learning inflections.
But maybe it has a function for quickly double checking forms.

χωρις KALOS SOFTWARE, λογους τουτους εγω εγραψα ὑμιν.
εαν εγω γραψῃ ποιησαντι KALOS, ποσῳ μαλλῳ γραψομαι ὑμιν;

ποιησαντι KALOS, ευρον :
Not "γραψῃ," but "γραψω"
Not "μαλλῳ ," but "μᾶλλον"

ουκ εμαθον; λεγετε οτι ναι η λεγετε οτι ουχι. ηδη εγω ειπα οτι ναι.

[Jonathan Robie]

I think rather that one learns by practicing conversation with simple sentences that use the standard inflections for omega verbs and their contracted variants in alpha, omicron, and epstilon-stems and the inflections for the μι verbs in most common use. That's the procedure that's actually followed in the courses offered by Randall Buth, Daniel Streett, et al. The old Latin pedagogical saw is discimus agere agendo -- "We learn to do by doing." The equivalent here would be διαλεγόμενοι μανθάνομεν διαλέγεσθαι.

But most of us don't have Randall Buth or Daniel Streett. Are workbooks the next-best alternative? Which workbooks are best?

I'm not aware of any software that has done this well ... or Anki decks, for that matter. Is there something I should know about?

[RandallButh]

fortunately, the inflections that are most irregular tend to be the most common.
That is why kids eventually learn "went" in English instead of "goed".

The same is true in Greek, though maybe with a vengence. Greek has more common irregular forms.
The answer is to use these WORDS in real contexts, first in comprehension then in production.
And over the centuries the Greeks helped themselves out by starting to use forms like OTIA 'ears' instead of OYS --> OTA

Why did I capitalize WORDS, above? Because the words must be used, not the generative historical rules for the forms. After one learns to say
ἕστηκα and ἔστην people can learn why ESTHKA is written with a 'daseia', but not ESTHN. Along with many hundreds of other interesting little tidbits. (Yes, that's right. Words where 's' drops out often generated 'daseia', like SXEIN 'to have', no initial 's' E(s)XEIS --> but (*s!)EKSEIS 'you will have'.)

However, for fluency, get the common words inside you as words, not as rules.

[Barry Hofstetter]

I think this is a both/and. I strongly encourage memorizing the paradigms, and at the same time using them as much as possible. We have evidence from ancient times that school children memorized paradigms.

[RandallButh]

I think this is a both/and. I strongly encourage memorizing the paradigms, and at the same time using them as much as possible. We have evidence from ancient times that school children memorized paradigms.

Yes, and from Dionyios Thrax we know that they used real words BOW BOAS BOA (not *boa+w, *boa+es, *boa+e).

Paradigms are very useful to the learner, absolutely. SLA is not 'against' paradigms, but it does suggest learning in meaningful pieces. E.g., a student is better off working on pieces like "I'm standing here, you are standing there", before working out of the whole paradigm. "You came today, He will come tomorrow."